Intuitive vs Deliberative Approaches to Making Decisions About Life Support: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

Patients with serious illnesses are often encouraged to actively deliberate about the desirability of life support. Yet it is unknown whether deliberation changes the substance or quality of such decisions.

Objective

To identify differences in decisions about life support interventions and goals of care made intuitively vs deliberatively by patients with serious illnesses.

Design, setting, and participants

Randomized clinical trial in which patients were asked to express treatment preferences in a series of clinical scenarios. Participants were 199 hospitalized patients aged 60 years and older with serious oncologic, cardiac, and pulmonary illnesses treated in a large, urban academic hospital from July 1, 2015, through March 15, 2016.

Interventions

P

SUBMITTER: Rubin EB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6484534 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature